Six amazing York ‘then and now’ photographs that transport you through time

[before-after label_one="Over" label_two="Under"]Sometimes you can look at York and think time has stood still. Other times it feels like the whole city is changing. Drag the arrows to swipe between then and now on our interactive pictures, and you’ll get the same feeling: some corners of York have hardly changed while others are very different…
[before-after]

Micklegate Bar

The cars may be sleeker, but much else has stayed the same. It’s still the Punch Bowl on the right hand side, although then owned by Magnets, not Wetherspoons.

The cars have changed of course, but what really strikes you is the lack of signs and street clutter that these days spoil the view.

York Minster

Our ageless cathedral. Apart from the addition of cars, and trees growing or disappearing, very little has altered.

The electric street lights are the other major addition in the modern image.

River Ouse

Now this really is a game of two halves. Quite a lot has been preserved on the left bank as we look, including the pubs and pedestrian walkway.

Swipe all the way to the right and you see how the old warehouses have gone or been modernised into slick flats.

High Petergate

A lot of tender loving care has gone into restoring the old buildings either side of High Petergate.

Strangely, the street light in the new picture has been fashioned to look older than the one from yesteryear…

St Helen’s Square

St Helen’s Square feels much more like a road in the older picture, with the central bollard.

What is now Blacks was then Barclays Bank. Could this be silver jubilee year, with the bunting on the right?

Low Petergate

Some long gone names of retail in the older image, including John Cross and Merrimans.

Odd, though, how close the Minster seems. An early equivalent of Photoshopping, perhaps?

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13 comments

The Punch Bowl [at Micklegate Bar Without] was a John Smith’s pub selling Magnet Ales… have happy memories of going in with a bucket and buying 16 pints of Harp when I’d finished work across the road at Vittles, not all for me I should add!

Thank you David, I enjoyed looking at these. Wallace sacked York – I think or was that the Jacobites.
But walking around Edinburgh is similar it just oozes the past, the present and to some extent the future. Just brilliant to see and feel.ð